[hider= WIP] 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OvsVSWB4TI

STRIKE HQ's green house was, as it was every morning, a palace of tranquillity. Far from the hustle and bustle of the offices, machine factory floor and training rooms, Imbricata tended to her plants, jotting down notes in her lab book. Between her delicate fingers she softly fondled the petals of her namesake, opuntia imbricata, a weed-like cactus from Nevada. The flower was beautiful though, the petals were iridescent magenta in colour and sparkled in the bright sunlight. These contrasted majestically against the bright golden anthers, their fuzzy texture capturing the light, giving them a gentle yellow glow. This wasn't a research plant, it was a gift from the brave mammal scientist that first attempted dialog with her. An alien specialist working for the United Nations, flying around the planet in a little metal box, stopping the local savages having their way with other worldly visitors. Anyway, she had more important things to do, such a catalogue all her notes on the database so other mammals could look at it and ask her stupid questions via email.  

Imbricata closed up the green house and took the stairs down to the top floor, from there she could take an elevator to the "Lego-style" freeform open office space. As she rode down, news bulletins played through the tinny speakers.

"...Continued eletrical faults at the new Mercury Mall causing injury to customers, large lawsuits expected..."
"...Treefoot, hoax or new monstrosity stalking the Countryside?..."
"...And now for the weather, largely clear skies with highs of 71.6 Fahrenheit, except over Simon Middle school where thunderstorms have persisted all afternoon, for the last week..."

Treefoot sounded like her area of expertise, but its shyness and elusiveness, meant it wasn't a priority, neither was the Mercury Mall "Electrocutioner", the state police had formed a strong perimeter around the area now, which meant they they thought they can handle it and STRIKE shouldn't intervene until they beg and pleaded us to. She really didn't want to go to school, the only thing worse than mammals were small mammals. It wasn't responsible to leave them either. Despite what she was going to do, it was clear needed assistance. She waved her ID card in front of the Near-field scanner and a few more squares of white light turn on the floor selection, she poked the crossed axes. It changed blue denoting its selection and the lift continued to plummet to the basement, stopping briefly at the office floor, the previous selection.

The elevator doors swished open, followed by the portcullis of the War Room lobby. They claimed these holo-room was designed for training, but it seemed that they were better suited to blowing off stream and engaging in the mindless destruction that mammals crave without the responsibility of having actually rendered something useless. I guess in that respect it was an adequate tool for self control, and very much a useful, expensive piece of equipment for STRIKE to have. She still didn't really understand it. Imbricata had been told that if she needed bodyguard/s for field work she could either set up a calendar event and hope an off duty agent would ping her about it, email administration and have them assign an agent, which was really meant for to be used far in advance and in reality meant waiting hours in a queue with others or just go to the War Room and shout at the agent using it. If they were doing necessary training comms would be off and you still have to wait, but it was still faster than using the electronic systems.

As she picked up the handset she scanned the screen for login details.

"Mr. Marlowe, this is Imbricata from ADVASC division. Put your toys away, your assistance is required."


[/hider]